California leading reduction of mass incarceration? Think again

Proposition 47 is estimated to decrease the state’s prison population by an annual average of 4,700 inmates.

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

While criminal justice may be an Editorial Board 2016 focus, I find your March 13 editorial “Radically rethinking prisons” prematurely self-congratulatory and dangerously naive. I suggest you look behind the official quotes and study the implementation of this “major shift in criminal justice leadership” before concluding that “California is at the forefront of a national movement to reduce mass incarceration.”

For example, Proposition 47 is estimated to decrease the state’s prison population by an annual average of 4,700 inmates. The long-term potential of Prop. 47 to break the current cycle of addiction, crime, incarceration and recidivism, however, requires the reinvestment of any savings into the Safe Neighborhoods and School Fund.

Those funds are continuously appropriated to augment existing mental health and substance abuse programs, truancy and dropout prevention and victim services. Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2016-17 budget estimates a net savings of only $29.3 million from Prop. 47 to be deposited from the general fund into the Safe Neighborhoods fund.

According to the legislative analyst’s office, Brown’s budget proposal underestimates the savings of Prop. 47 by more than $100 million in fiscal year 2016-17. By the state-estimated cost of $63,848 per inmate, this figure may actually be more than $300 million. The governor’s miscalculating of Prop. 47 savings does a disservice to the at-risk population helped by the Safe Neighborhoods fund as well as ignoring the will of the voters in passing Prop. 47.

If the Editorial Board intends to focus on criminal justice, I suggest you confirm substantive actions over glowing quotes by our state and county officials.

Wayne Boatwright is a fifth-generation Californian and an inmate serving 92 months for gross negligent vehicular manslaughter at San Quentin State Prison.